Volume Ii Part 19 (1/2)

There will be fights in the air with wind-guns and bows and arrows; and there will be prodigious increase of land for tillage, especially in France, by breaking up all public roads as useless. But enough of my fooleries; for which I am sorry you must pay double postage.

_HIS LETTERS ON LITERATURE--DISADVANTAGE OF MODERN WRITERS--COMPARISON OF LADY MARY WORTLEY WITH MADAME DE SeVIGNe._

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.

_June_ 22, 1785.

Since I received your book,[1] Sir, I scarce ceased from reading till I had finished it; so admirable I found it, and so full of good sense, brightly delivered. Nay, I am pleased with myself, too, for having formed the same opinions with you on several points, in which we do not agree with the generality of men. On some topics, I confess frankly, I do not concur with you: considering how many you have touched, it would be wonderful if we agreed on all, or I should not be sincere if I said I did. There are others on which I have formed no opinion; for I should give myself an impertinent air, with no truth, if I pretended to have any knowledge of many subjects, of which, young as you are, you seem to have made yourself master. Indeed, I have gone deeply into nothing, and therefore shall not discuss those heads on which we differ most; as probably I should not defend my own opinions well. There is but one part of your work to which I will venture any objection, though you have considered it much, and I little, very little indeed, with regard to your proposal, which to me is but two days old: I mean your plan for the improvement of our language, which I allow has some defects, and which wants correction in several particulars. The specific amendment which you propose, and to which I object, is the addition of _a's_ and _o's_ to our terminations. To change _s_ for _a_ in the plural number of our substantives and adjectives, would be so violent an alteration, that I believe neither the power of Power nor the power of Genius would be able to effect it. In most cases I am convinced that very strong innovations are more likely to make impression than small and almost imperceptible differences, as in religion, medicine, politics, &c.; but I do not think that language can be treated in the same manner, especially in a refined age.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Pinkerton was a Scotch lawyer, who published a volume ent.i.tled ”Letters on Literature” under the name of Heron; which, however, he afterwards suppressed, as full of ill-considered ideas, which was not strange, as he was only twenty-five.]

When a nation first emerges from barbarism, two or three masterly writers may operate wonders; and the fewer the number of writers, as the number is small at such a period, the more absolute is their authority.

But when a country has been polis.h.i.+ng itself for two or three centuries, and when, consequently, authors are innumerable, the most super-eminent genius (or whoever is esteemed so, though without foundation) possesses very limited empire, and is far from meeting implicit obedience. Every petty writer will contest very novel inst.i.tutions: every inch of change in any language will be disputed; and the language will remain as it was, longer than the tribunal which should dictate very heterogeneous alterations. With regard to adding _a_ or _o_ to final consonants, consider, Sir, should the usage be adopted, what havoc it would make!

All our poetry would be defective in metre, or would become at once as obsolete as Chaucer; and could we promise ourselves, that, though we should acquire better harmony and more rhymes, we should have a new crop of poets, to replace Milton, Dryden, Gray, and, I am sorry you will not allow me to add, Pope! You might enjoin our prose to be reformed, as you have done by the ”Spectator” in your thirty-fourth Letter; but try Dryden's ”Ode” by your new inst.i.tution.

I beg your pardon for these trivial observations: I a.s.sure you I could write a letter ten times as long, if I were to specify all I like in your work. I more than like most of it; and I am charmed with your glorious love of liberty, and your other humane and n.o.ble sentiments.

Your book I shall with great pleasure send to Mr. Colman[1]: may I tell him, without naming you, that it is written by the author of the comedy I offered to him? He must be struck with your very handsome and generous conduct in printing your encomiums on him, after his rejecting your piece. It is as great as uncommon, and gives me as good an opinion of your heart, Sir, as your book does of your great sense. Both a.s.sure me that you will not take ill the liberty I have used in expressing my doubts on your plan for amending our language, or for any I may use in dissenting from a few other sentiments in your work; as I shall in what I think your too low opinion of some of the French writers, of your preferring Lady Mary Wortley to Madame de Sevigne, and of your esteeming Mr. Hume a man of deeper and more solid understanding than Mr. Gray. In the two last articles it is impossible to think more differently than we do.[2] In Lady Mary's ”Letters,” which I never could read but once, I discovered no merit of any sort; yet I have seen others by her (unpublished) that have a good deal of wit; and for Mr. Hume, give me leave to say that I think your opinion, ”that he might have ruled a state,” ought to be qualified a little; as in the very next page you say, his ”History” is ”a mere apology for prerogative,” and a very weak one. If he could have ruled a state, one must presume, at best, that he would have been an able tyrant; and yet I should suspect that a man, who, sitting coolly in his chamber, could forge but a weak apology for the prerogative, would not have exercised it very wisely. I knew personally and well both Mr. Hume and Mr. Gray, and thought there was no degree of comparison between their understandings; and, in fact, Mr.

Hume's writings were so superior to his conversation, that I frequently said he understood nothing till he had written upon it. What you say, Sir, of the discord in his ”History” from his love of prerogative and hatred of churchmen, flatters me much; as I have taken notice of that very unnatural discord in a piece I printed some years ago, but did not publish, and which I will show to you when I have the pleasure of seeing you here; a satisfaction I shall be glad to taste, whenever you will let me know you are at leisure after the beginning of next week. I have the honour to be, Sir, &c.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Colman was manager of the Haymarket Theatre.]

[Footnote 2: It is difficult to judge what were the published letters of Lady Mary which Walpole could have seen. If Mr. Pinkerton preferred them to those of Mme. de Sevigne, he could certainly have adduced plausible reasons for his preference. There is far greater variety in them, as was natural from the different lives led by the two fair writers. Mme. de Sevigne's was almost confined to Paris and the Court; Lady Mary was a great traveller. Her husband was English amba.s.sador at Constantinople and other places, and her letters give descriptions of that city, of Vienna, the Hague, Venice, Rome, Naples, &c., &c. It may be fitly pointed out here that in a letter to Lord Strafford Walpole expresses an opinion that letter-writing is a branch of literature in which women are likely to excel men; ”for our s.e.x is too jealous of the reputation of good sense to hazard a thousand trifles and negligences which give grace, ease, and familiarity to correspondence.”]

_CRITICISM ON VARIOUS AUTHORS: GREEK, LATIN, FRENCH, AND ENGLISH--HUMOUR OF ADDISON, AND OF FIELDING--WALLER--MILTON--BOILEAU'S ”LUTRIN”--”THE RAPE OF THE LOCK”--MADAME DE SeVIGNe._

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.

_June_ 26, 1785.

I have sent your book to Mr. Colman, Sir, and must desire you in return to offer my grateful thanks to Mr. Knight, who has done me an honour, to which I do not know how I am ent.i.tled, by the present of his poetry, which is very cla.s.sic, and beautiful, and tender, and of chaste simplicity.

To _your_ book, Sir, I am much obliged on many accounts; particularly for having recalled my mind to subjects of delight, to which it was grown dulled by age and indolence. In consequence of your reclaiming it, I asked myself whence you feel so much disregard for certain authors whose fame is established: you have a.s.signed good reasons for withholding your approbation from some, on the plea of their being imitators: it was natural, then, to ask myself again, whence they had obtained so much celebrity. I think I have discovered a cause, which I do not remember to have seen noted; and _that_ cause I suspect to have been, that certain of those authors possessed grace:--do not take me for a disciple of Lord Chesterfield, nor imagine that I mean to erect grace into a capital ingredient of writing, but I do believe that it is a perfume that will serve from putrefaction, and is distinct even from style, which regards expression. _Grace_, I think, belongs to _manner_.

It is from the charm of grace that I believe some authors, not in your favour, obtained part of their renown; Virgil, in particular: and yet I am far from disagreeing with you on his subject in general. There is such a dearth of invention in the Aeneid (and when he did invent, it was often so foolishly), so little good sense, so little variety, and so little power over the pa.s.sions, that I have frequently said, from contempt for his matter, and from the charm of his harmony, that I believe I should like his poem better, if I was to hear it repeated, and did not understand Latin. On the other hand, he has more than harmony: whatever he utters is said gracefully, and he enn.o.bles his images, especially in the Georgics; or, at least, it is more sensible there, from the humility of the subject. A Roman farmer might not understand his diction in agriculture; but he made a Roman courtier understand farming, the farming of that age, and could captivate a lord of Augustus's bedchamber, and tempt him to listen to themes of rusticity.

On the contrary, Statius and Claudian, though talking of war, would make a soldier despise them as bullies. That graceful manner of thinking in Virgil seems to me to be more than style, if I do not refine too much: and I admire, I confess, Mr. Addison's phrase, that Virgil ”tossed about his dung with an air of majesty.” A style may be excellent without grace: for instance, Dr. Swift's. Eloquence may bestow an immortal style, and one of more dignity; yet eloquence may want that ease, that genteel air that flows from or const.i.tutes grace. Addison himself was master of that grace, even in his pieces of humour, and which do not owe their merit to style; and from that combined secret he excels all men that ever lived; but Shakspeare, in humour,[1] by never dropping into an approach towards burlesque and buffoonery, when even his humour descended to characters that in other hands would have been vulgarly low. Is not it clear that Will Wimble was a gentleman, though he always lived at a distance from good company? Fielding had as much humour, perhaps, as Addison; but, having no idea of grace, is perpetually disgusting. His innkeepers and parsons are the grossest of their profession; and his gentlemen are awkward when they should be at their ease.

[Footnote 1: ”_Addison's humour._” Undoubtedly there is much gentlemanlike humour in Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley; but to say that he ”excels all men that ever lived” in that quality is an exaggeration hardly to be understood in a man who had seen the ”Rivals” and the ”Critic.” In the present day no one, it may be supposed, would echo it, after Scott with the Baron, the Antiquary, Dalgetty, &c., and Thackeray with Mrs. O'Dowd, Major Pendennis, and Colonel Newcome. The epithet ”_Vafer_” applied to Horace by Persius is not inapplicable to Addison.

There is a slyness about some of his sketches which breathes something of the Horatian facetiousness. It is remarkable that in all this long and varied criticism Walpole scarcely mentions _wit_, which he seems to allow to no one but Horace and Boileau. His comparative denial of it to Aristophanes and Lucian creates a supposition that his Greek was inferior to his Latin scholars.h.i.+p. It is not always easy to distinguish humour from wit; of the two, the former seems the higher quality. Wit is verbal, conversant with language, combining keenness and terseness of expression with a keen perception of resemblances or differences; humour has, comparatively speaking, little to do with language, and is of different kinds, varying with the cla.s.s of composition in which it is found. In one of his ”Imaginary Conversations” Savage Landor remarks that ”It is no uncommon thing to hear, 'Such an one has humour rather than wit.' Here the expression can only mean _pleasantry_, for whoever has humour has wit, although it does not follow that whoever has wit has humour.... The French have little humour, because they have little _character_; they excel all nations in wit, because of their levity and sharpness.”]

The Grecians had grace in everything; in poetry, in oratory, in statuary, in architecture, and probably, in music and painting. The Romans, it is true, were their imitators; but, having grace too, imparted it to their copies, which gave them a merit that almost raises them to the rank of originals. Horace's ”Odes” acquired their fame, no doubt, from the graces of his manner and purity of his style--the chief praise of Tibullus and Propertius, who certainly cannot boast of more meaning than Horace's ”Odes.”

Waller, whom you proscribe, Sir, owed his reputation to the graces of his manner, though he frequently stumbled, and even fell flat; but a few of his smaller pieces are as graceful as possible: one might say that he excelled in painting ladies in enamel, but could not succeed in portraits in oil, large as life. Milton had such superior merit, that I will only say, that if his angels, his Satan, and his Adam have as much dignity as the Apollo Belvedere, his Eve has all the delicacy and graces of the Venus of Medicis; as his description of Eden has the colouring of Albano. Milton's tenderness imprints ideas as graceful as Guido's Madonnas: and the ”Allegro,” ”Penseroso,” and ”Comus” might be denominated from the three Graces; as the Italians gave similar t.i.tles to two or three of Petrarch's best sonnets.

Cowley, I think, would have had grace (for his mind was graceful) if he had had any ear, or if his task had not been vitiated by the pursuit of wit; which, when it does not offer itself naturally, degenerates into tinsel or pertness. Pertness is the mistaken affection of grace, as pedantry produces erroneous dignity; the familiarity of the one, and the clumsiness of the other, distort or prevent grace. Nature, that furnishes samples of all qualities, and on the scale of gradation exhibits all possible shades, affords us types that are more apposite than words. The eagle is sublime, the lion majestic, the swan graceful, the monkey pert, the bear ridiculously awkward. I mention these as more expressive and comprehensive than I could make definitions of my meaning; but I will apply the swan only, under whose wings I will shelter an apology for Racine, whose pieces give me an idea of that bird. The colouring of the swan is pure; his att.i.tudes are graceful; he never displeases you when sailing on his proper element. His feet may be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk not natural; he can soar, but it is with difficulty;--still, the impression the swan leaves is that of grace. So does Racine.

Boileau may be compared to the dog, whose sagacity is remarkable, as well as its fawning on its master, and its snarling at those it dislikes. If Boileau was too austere to admit the pliability of grace, he compensates by good sense and propriety. He is like (for I will drop animals) an upright magistrate, whom you respect, but whose justice and severity leave an awe that discourages familiarity. His copies of the ancients may be too servile: but, if a good translator deserves praise, Boileau deserves more. He certainly does not fall below his originals; and, considering at what period he wrote, has greater merit still. By his imitations he held out to his countrymen models of taste, and banished totally the bad taste of his predecessors. For his ”Lutrin,”[1]

replete with excellent poetry, wit, humour, and satire, he certainly was not obliged to the ancients. Excepting Horace, how little idea had either Greeks or Romans of wit and humour! Aristophanes and Lucian, compared with moderns, were, the one a blackguard, and the other a buffoon. In my eyes, the ”Lutrin,” the ”Dispensary,” and the ”Rape of the Lock,” are standards of grace and elegance, not to be paralleled by antiquity; and eternal reproaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the ”Pucelle” degraded him as much, when compared with the three authors I have named, as his ”Henriade” leaves Virgil, and even Lucan, whom he more resembles, by far his superiors.